1. Saul and temporal lobe epilepsy:
Religious Experience
Saul and temporal lobe epilepsy:
This religious experience is an example of one which could have a medical and psychological explanation. Many have suggested that this experience could instead have been the result of a condition called temporal lobe epilepsy. During arousal in the temporal lobes people can experience feelings of God and even see visions of religious experience.
James concluded that:
The experiences should not be completely rejected
It is reasonable to assume the experiences are real
Religious change can be sudden or gradual
For them to be real they should have a life changing experience
No truth could be found in these experiences, they could only be true if they were genuine for the individual
William James
Wrote the most important book on religious experiences from a psychological perspective
Book: ‘The varieties of religious experience: a study of human nature’
At the heart of every religion there are religious experiences, but religion develops after the experience
He accepts that there are psychological phenomena to explain these experiences but thinks that there may still be a psychological element
In his book he wanted to: not push an evangelical Christian message, take an objective stance, look for significant insights and test experiences for validity
He thought that the experiencer should adopt the values and teachings of the religion
William James on conversion:
We can empirically observe the changes in a person long-term, the long-term changes to someone through adopting the beliefs and teachings of the religion can be used as evidence
But inner experience is not empirically detectable
This could be considered evidence for God’s existence
Scholarly views:
Friedrich Schleiermacher: these experiences are emotional, the theology comes later
Martine Buber: they are analogous and mutual
Example of RE:
Julian of Norwich was a Christian mystic who lived in isolation. During a severe illness she experienced 16 ‘showings’ or revelations of divine love
The Miracle of Fatima: 3 children saw a vision of the virgin Mary, they are told to return and do so with 70,000 people, once there the majority of these people claim to have seen the sun ‘dancing’ and more visions of the virgin Mary. However, mass hysteria could have accounted for this and people may have felt under pressure to experience something.
The Toronto Blessing: at a Church in Toronto people have experienced strange behaviors such as speaking in tongues, laughter, shaking, falling and making animal noises, these are attributed to God. This could have been caused by preachers encouraging people to experience something and whipping the congregation in to a frenzy.
Otto and the numinous experience
Direct experiences=include a direct encounter with God
Numinous experiences=an experience in which we apprehend the ‘wholly other’
Otto believed that direct experiences must be numinous
Indirect experiences=the individual focuses on God
Otto argued that all religious experiences are numinous
Otto believed that religious experience was central to religion because god can only be experienced like that as He is entirely distinct to humans
4 qualities of RE:
Ineffability- can’t be expressed in normal language
Noetic quality- the understanding of important truths that could not have been known otherwise
Transience- short –lived but the effects last a lifetime
Passivity- the experiencer feels the experience was initiated by another being
Corporate religious experiences: these are experiences that more than one person experiences at once.
Mysticism: direct knowledge of God, spiritual truth or ultimate reality can be achieved through subjective experience
However:
These experiences cannot be documented
‘numinous’ can be considered too simplistic a definition

2. Religious experience-continued
Arguments from religious experience:
Swinburne: if God exists then religious experiences are to be expected. He also came up with 2 principles: the Principle of credulity: if someone thinks they have experienced something they probably have, and the Principle of testimony: if there is no reason to doubt someone we should trust them.
James: religious experiences are persuasive rather than inductive proof of God, they are psychological phenomena but could still have a religious element
The historical argument: if these experiences have been so influential then they must be real
The cumulative argument: too many people have claimed to have had religious experiences for them to be fake so God must be the cause
Challenges to the arguments:
Marx: God is a projection of our imaginations, there is no God to experience
Dawkins: in the God delusion Dawkins writes about a story of his friend who was camping in Scotland and though he heard the Devil speak to him, but it turned out to be the call of the devil bird, this story highlights that our imaginations can convince us that we are experiencing something that we are not and that there can be much more ordinary explanations for these experiences
Psychological explanations of RE:
Feuerbach: there is no God, he is a human projection, we made him in our own image, therefore there are no religious experiences
Freud: the idea of God is an infantile neurosis, we crave a perfect parental figure, the idea of an all powerful God provides this
Mackie: we are mistaken about the cause of the experience, it is the experience itself that matters, we cannot tell the difference between God caused and Devil caused experiences, yet we attribute the devil caused experiences to the subconscious mind and the God caused experiences to God, therefore we are attributing the same thing to different causes so religious experiences are not real
Jung: they are purely psychological experiences but religion itself is good for us
Frankl: religion can be psychologically beneficial for us
Studies:
Michael Persinger: he believed we could induce RE, he conducted a study in which he stimulated the temporal lobes, 80% of participants described a feeling of “not being alone” or used some religious language, there were different sensitivities found in people to the stimulating, the participants were told they were studying relaxation so they were not encouraged to try and experience God
Andrew Newburg: he studied those trying to induce religious experiences in themselves, specifically Buddhist monks to study the brain during meditation looking at the bloodstream and brain scans, he found that temporal lobes were being stimulated and eventually shut down during meditation meaning that the sense of self disappears